Walser
incensed Germany's Jewish
community with a 1998 speech
in which he called for an end
to using the Holocaust as a
'tool of intimidation or a
moral bludgeon' against
Germany.

May 29, 2002

Noted
German writer's book about murder of
Jewish critic labeled 'document of hate'

Associated Press

AN upcoming novel in which one of
Germany's best-known writers toys with the
murder of a Jewish critic was shunned
Wednesday by a leading newspaper, which
labeled the book a "document of hate" and
refused to publish excerpts.

David Irving comments: A
website correspondent notes,

"THE celebrity status given
the communist Reich-Ranicki and
other literary communists, by the
German and 'western' media since
the unification of Germany, may
be compared with the
marginalization of anyone
suggesting
"préférence
national" - the expression used
by former French prime minister
Balladur. This is labeled
"Rightist extremism" with the
suggestion of ostracism. Our
Orwellian culture is distorted by
this "Red Shift" or cultural
communism.

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung,
which often offers a forum for
intellectual debates, said the account by
author Martin Walser was a thinly
veiled *settling of scores with Marcel
Reich-Ranicki, a prominent German
literary critic and a Holocaust
survivor.

In an open letter to Walser printed in
the newspaper Wednesday, co-publisher
Frank Schirrmacher said "Death of a
Critic" goes beyond a writer's fantasy of
getting back at his critics and aims
explicitly against a Jew.

The book "is a document of hate,"
Schirrmacher said. "It is about the murder
of a Jew."

Walser sent the paper a manuscript with
a request to serialize excerpts. But
Schirrmacher said the paper would not
publish a book that "toys with" completing
the killing that Reich-Ranicki, now 82,
escaped at the hands of the Nazis.

According to the paper, the novel
involves a writer suspected of killing a
prominent critic and a narrator who
investigates the case. Narrator and writer
later turn out to be the same person, and
the critic is revealed to have faked his
death so he could spend time with his
mistress.

Walser
incensed Germany's Jewish community
with a 1998 speech in which he called
for an end to using the Holocaust as a
"tool of intimidation or a moral
bludgeon" against Germany.

The leader of Germany's Jewish
community at the time, Ignatz
Bubis, accused Walser of "intellectual
arson," though the two men later publicly
reconciled.